


Floating in the Ever, Ever, After

by secterinspecter



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Angst, F/F, HUGE SPOILERS, Harrow the Ninth Spoilers, Post-HtN, an extremely painful misunderstanding, canon-typical discussion of suicide, one might say... a grave misunderstanding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:27:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25722061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secterinspecter/pseuds/secterinspecter
Summary: Gideon discovers a certain tomb in the river.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 6
Kudos: 60





	Floating in the Ever, Ever, After

**Author's Note:**

> I was actually less devastated by the ending of Harrow than the ending of Gideon at first, but then I went and thought about this. Oof.
> 
> Title from All Gone by Mother Mother.

I want to make sure we’re both clear on this: The water of the river tastes absolutely terrible. Like boiled Crux-ass but with a few gazillion bonus corpses added for some subtler notes. I know you’ve been there and all, but, one, you’re a necromancer, specifically a necromancer who has way too many feelings about corpses for a goddamned bone magician, and two, you seem to have an extremely tenuous understanding of liquids and taste even under normal circumstances. Anyway, that’s why I thought it was a fucking relief when I tasted the salt water and felt your body screaming from cold rather than from being sat on by ghosts.

  
I should have known better.

  
From under the surface, your head collided with something that I originally assumed to be another round of ghost bits, but which gave way with the slightest touch. Which, hey, if I could get rid of ghosts by whacking them with your head, that’s a strategy I should have thought of earlier. It was ice though, not ghosts, so I’m still not sure about that one.

  
Where the coating of ice was slowly dispersing, I could see that the water was deep and dark and black. Your feet certainly couldn’t touch the ground and mine probably couldn’t have either. I still didn’t know how to swim, so this wasn’t ideal.

  
The shore was out of the question, but using a method called “freezing your titties off by body-slamming a disintegrating ice sheet over and over in the general forward direction” I managed to make it to some kind of island. Believe me that I wished there was a better option, one that did not involve your titties.

  
The island was covered in more ice. I came to the conclusion that this place had a lot of ice going on. I was still happy enough to lie down on the ice and stare up at some weird ceiling worms, though. Even with beads of icy water dripping down your neck and shoulders from your ridiculous hair, this very nearly passed for a not-wet situation, something that I had been sorely missing in the river.

  
Then, like a fucking idiot, I got up. I slipped on the ice, held onto a big column made of glossy black stone, and managed to stay upright. It was around then that I started to get some serious tomb vibes. Being Ninth and all, I like to think myself pretty good at identifying tomb vibes.

  
Being Ninth and all, I apparently also didn’t think it was a colossally stupid idea to enter the doors of what was clearly a mausoleum. There was a coffin inside, which was, again, pretty standard tomb stuff. Ice extended across the floor, up to the edges of the coffin, and I began to very carefully cross the room. It wasn’t like I had anything better to do.

  
When I got closer and saw the giant broken chains, I upgraded my diagnosis to Tomb Vibes, capital letters. The big one. The Locked Tomb. The one where the true love of your life lies interred, when she isn’t wandering around hitting on you in your sleep or whatever.

  
I’d seen your dead girlfriend already, of course. Most memorably when she came to me in our dying moments and said some shit that made no sense. She’d been hot, I guess, for a corpse, but I had to admit that I’d never seen her in her natural habitat. By which I mean a coffin, because, dude, she’s dead. So I was willing to go up, look inside, and give her the benefit of the doubt.

  
Unfortunately, and I can’t believe I’m saying unfortunately, she wasn’t there. When I looked inside, I saw what I assumed at first was your body’s reflection in the glassy lid of the coffin.

  
There were a few things wrong here. The coffin did not have a lid. The body in the coffin was holding a two-hander, and I wasn’t, much as I would have liked to have been. When I experimentally lifted one of your arms, the corresponding arm in the coffin stayed exquisitely still. You looked happy.

  
I got a solid five minutes out of considering how fucking weird it was to see you in your body while I was also in your body, but a different version of your body. It made my head hurt. I wanted to know how come God let you have two bodies.

  
Then, Harrow, it started to become clear exactly what you’d done.

  
You’d left me alone in your body, I’d already known that much, but, God help me, I assumed you were incapacitated, or doing important Lyctor things, or even just trying to stay the hell away from me. Not this.

  
You could have stopped at refusing to take my life, my flesh, my end, freely and caringly offered. But no. You always were one step ahead. You’d found someone to give your own life to, in what I’m sure you thought was the poetic sacrifice I’d been cruelly denying you all along. By actually giving a damn about whether you kept breathing, which was apparently a cardinal sin.

  
What was worse was that, unlike you, the girl formerly in the tomb would probably accept such a sacrifice without thinking twice. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t think she would be grateful or that she’d love you for it. But at least she’d fucking take it.

  
I couldn’t bear to look at your contented face in the coffin for a second longer. I staggered out of the mausoleum. Mucky river water was bubbling up from the surface of the moat of icy water. I welcomed the sight.

  
Knowing it would be a long time before I could breathe again, the river being what it is, I tried to draw air into your lungs. Your throat juddered and wrenched and I realized that sobs were trying to force their way out. It felt profoundly stupid to cry over this with your face, but I couldn’t seem to stop it.

  
I jumped into the river.

**Author's Note:**

> If only Gideon had seen Frontline Titties, that would have cleared everything up :(


End file.
